MUSIC REVIEW : Blomstedt at Bowl: Sibelius, Definitively

There weren’t any cheap thrills at Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday night.

A serious two-piece program dispensing with frivolous opening ceremony marked the agenda. Serious musicians--with ice in their veins--held the stage. Committed and disciplined performances rang through the cool night air.

In the second night of their three-concert visit, Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony made no compromises with the outdoor circumstances and, before a crowd of 7,859, made it all fly.

Blomstedt is clearly a gifted musician and painstaking craftsman, but he has never been much of one to wear his heart on his sleeve. He’s not one for sweating either. During one of his trademark patrician performances a listener can understandably feel as if it’s all a little too easy, too dapper. On such occasions the 67-year-old conductor looks even more like George Will than he usually does.

But the smooth exterior of Blomstedt’s interpretations is usually the result of his thorough grappling with the score, his dissection and reassemblage of its elements into an elegantly polished and ultimately convincing whole. So it was this night.

His like-minded soloist was 28-year-old German violinist Christian Tetzlaff. Tetzlaff, who made his Philharmonic debut last year with the Berg Concerto and his U.S. debut a few years before with the Schoenberg Concerto, also turned out to be a musician without a jot of nonsense in him.

His reading of the Brahms Violin Concerto was clean and lean, incisive and rhythmical. Where many violinists turn gooey, he forged ahead with tightly focused lyricism. Where most violinists stretch for profundity, arch for effect, he kept things moving forcefully, pointedly. One might fault him for rushing the cadenzas and for pretty much ignoring the fun in the finale, but his performance was all of a piece.

Blomstedt and orchestra offered a well-groomed accompaniment that made a virtue out of crispness.

In Sibelius’ First Symphony, Blomstedt, long a much-admired specializer in Scandinavian repertory, coaxed a graceful and poignant performance from his orchestra. He defined colors purposefully, enforced balances tellingly, let the nuances speak quietly and allowed the big themes to bloom majestically. Although Blomstedt could do nothing to hold the patchwork last movement together (no one can), the work made all of its hefty, sweeping points. This was a definitive reading, without flash.